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[Orius]

Probably picking a few different sources is your best bet. I often read Gamespot, they're ok, but they cover a wide variety of games and the reviewers don't always share my tastes. They also tend to rate a game by whatever the current standards are, so remakes of games that were great in the past end up getting somewhat mediocre reviews because the graphics and sound might not be up to what they consider par. I'd say they put too much focus on style to detriment of substance sometimes. Still, I tend to get a first impression from Gamespot when I'm curious about a game.

Game Spy is another site I'll tend to read. Their reviews are ok I guess, I don't really hang around there on a regular basis, but I use them as a second opinion.

GameFAQs is really hit or miss because it's non-professional reviews. So yeah there are teenagers there who basically give a game they like a 10 and a game they don't like a 1. Of course in the review they might have numbers that don't result in an arithmetic mean of their score either. Anyway, my advice if to ignore the reviews for big popular series like Final Fantasy, Zelda, Mario, Halo, or whatever because there's going to be dozens of reviews of varying quality. Even if it's one of the recommended reviews, the reviewer might sinply not like the game at all and be going out of the way to just pan it even if it's good. I've actually done a handful of reviews there for some old and obscure games, and I try to be objective.

Metacritic's good if I want more opinions. So if a mainstream site pans something like an RPG, I'll look for a site that covers RPGs in detail where it might be reviewed by someone who has a better appreciation for the game and who may be more honest about a game's strengths and weaknesses.